Study: Whyville Has Cheat Sites! Cyberbullying & Cheating in Online Worlds a Surprising Problem

Alana Semuels has an article this week in the Los Angeles Times detailing the surprising level of cyberbullying and cheating kids engage in while online. Despite chat safeguards in place in such kid-friendly worlds like Club Penguin (owned by Disney), Neopets (owned by Viacom), and Whyville (owned by Numedeon), kids often engage in cheating activities and bullying behavior. One example: account passwords are pilfered, often given by the victims in promised exchange for more virtual money or accouterments.

Even heavily restricted chat functions present levels of monitoring difficulties, as youngsters find creative ways to bypass profanity filters. Whyville flags children exchanging personal information such as their real names or phone numbers. The company blocks about 10 accounts a day due to violations.

Semuels notes UCLA doctoral student Deborah Fields and Dr. Yasmin Kafai wrote a paper on the topic for the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA 2007). The paper is an analysis of cheat sites designed for Whyville, examining 257 sites and following one in particular over the course of eight months.

According to the paper and Whyville staff, Whyville veterans often haze newcomers by demanding rent, even though apartments there are free. Other players have figured out a combination of keyboard commands that allows them to jump into the virtual cars of strangers, which is normally allowed only through invitation. Users have claimed that elections for the Whyville Senate were rigged through stuffing of virtual ballot boxes.

Some players took advantage of an outbreak of Whypox – a virtual plague that causes avatars to sneeze and break out in boils – by selling cures that turned out to be fake.

Cheating and online thievery can go to extremes at times, such as the recent case of a teen in Habbo stealing €4000 worth of virtual furniture.

So the question arises: Are kids who figure out ways to part others of their virtual cash displaying tendencies toward larceny, or are they simply more intelligent than those who part with their cash? Certainly deception is not good, but convincing others to invest in a for-profit scheme seems a reasonable exercise. This makes for a very interesting field of study.

References:
Fields, D. A., & Kafai, Y. B. (under review). Stealing from grandma or generating cultural knowledge? Contestations and effects of cheats in a teen virtual world. Paper submitted to DiGRA07. [Online]. Available: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kafai/paper/
whyville_pdfs/DIGRA07_cheat.pdf

Semuels, A. (2008, July 2). In virtual worlds, child avatars need protecting – from each other. Los Angeles Times. [Online]. Retrieved July 4, 2008 from http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/02/business/fi-kidssafe2